As a visual artist and writer, I see red when AI-generated images, music or words are presented as 'art'. It is boring, theft, soulless, sterile, and it is killing the planet through energy and water-guzzling datacentres. Someone suggested AI 'visual art' should be called 'Computer Rendered Artificial Pictures' (CRAP).
In the Australian comic art community, festivals like the Perth Comics Arts festival have denounced AI, saying they 'will not knowingly promote AI-generated materials, nor will we allow any such work to be a part of our festival'. I pumped my fist in the air when I heard this.
I draw the old way – with my hand. I come up with ideas the old way – with my brain. I do this because doing art faster with the help of AI would not make me more creative, skilled or fulfilled. It would actually drain the colour out of my existence as an artist.
I was once contacted by a researcher who was making AI specifically for artists. I could apparently train his AI technology in my artistic style so I could eventually simply enter a verbal prompt and voilà! An artwork would appear, as if I had drawn it. I never replied to the email. If I was able to generate an artwork in seconds, then what is the purpose of me, as an artist? Creating art is like spending six months in a leaky boat. You can't divorce the artist from the artistic process.
When people are moved by art, they want to know the artist and about the artistic process that created it. Who is behind AI 'art'? The machine? The person who wrote the prompt? The tech bro who built the AI that scraped human artistic skill and creation to generate the 'art'? 'I typed the prompt and pressed enter' – amazing bro, good work.
On the last day of humanity, someone would pick up a stick and write something in the dirt. Or utter some words aloud. Or sing a song. Into the abyss we would make our mark because art is how we say 'we were here and we lived.' Generative AI is a pale imitation of the real thing, which is the sole domain of the human, not the machine.
